as far as how he's different than hu jintao, i think people want to paint him as being a conservative in that hu jintao was a reformer but i'm not hour the record of the last sen years -- sure the record of the last ten years really points jintao and his people as necessarily being reformers and xi as necessarily being these conservative party hacks. >> also there's a sense that he recently when xi disappeared after making sort of comments that we have to look at more reform and greater modernization of the economy, you know, officials sort of explained he had a back problem. but others say he was shoring up his base. should we look at that as a sign that he's actually perhaps more of a reformer than we might think? >> well, reform has always been a part of what the chinese talk about. even mao zedong talked about the reform. i don't think that should be a shock to the system or some big remark. i think part of the disappearance is that in a 24/7 news cycle secretive leadership is going to look like it's unnecessarily hiding away. if he really did have back surgery or back pain of cou